Electronic components are used in ever increasing numbers of consumer and commercial electronic products. Examples of some of these consumer and commercial products are televisions, personal computers, Internet servers, cell phones, pagers, palm-type organizers, portable radios, car stereos, or remote controls. As the demand for these consumer and commercial electronics increases, there is also a demand for those same products to become smaller, more functional, and more portable for consumers and businesses.
As a result of the size decrease in these products, the components that comprise the products must also become smaller and better manufactured and designed. Examples of some of those components that need to be reduced in size or scaled down are printed circuit or wiring boards, resistors, wiring, keyboards, touch pads, and chip packaging. Many products and components also need to be prepackaged, such that the product and/or component can more readily be adapted to perform several related or unrelated functions and tasks. Examples of some of these “total solution” components and products comprise layered materials, mother boards, cellular and wireless phones and telecommunications devices and other components and products, such as those found in US patent and PCT Application Ser. Nos.: 60/396,294 filed Jul. 15, 2002, 60/294,433 filed May 30, 2001 and PCT/US02/17331 filed May 30, 2002, which are all commonly owned and incorporated herein in their entirety.
Components, therefore, are being broken down and investigated to determine if there are better building materials and methods that will allow them to be scaled down and/or combined to accommodate the demands for smaller electronic components. In layered components, two goals appear to be a) decreasing the number of the layers and/or b) decreasing the thickness of the layers while at the same time increasing the functionality and durability of the remaining layers in both cases. This task can be difficult, however, given that the number of layers cannot readily be reduced or made thinner without sacrificing functionality.
Also, as electronic devices become smaller and operate at higher speeds, energy emitted in the form of heat increases dramatically. A popular practice in the industry is to use thermal grease, or grease-like materials, alone or on a carrier in such devices to transfer the excess heat dissipated across physical interfaces. The most common types of thermal interface materials are thermal greases, phase change materials, and elastomer tapes. Thermal greases or phase change materials have lower thermal resistance than elastomer tape because of the ability to be spread in very thin layers and provide intimate contact between adjacent surfaces. Typical thermal impedance values range between 0.2-1.6° C. cm2/W. However, a serious drawback of thermal grease is that thermal performance deteriorates significantly after thermal cycling, such as from 65° C. to 150° C., or after power cycling when used in VLSI chips. It has also been found that the performance of these materials deteriorates when large deviations from surface planarity causes gaps to form between the mating surfaces in the electronic devices, or when large gaps between mating surfaces are present for other reasons, such as manufacturing tolerances, etc. When the heat transferability of these materials breaks down, the performance of the electronic device in which they are used is adversely affected.
Thus, there is a continuing need to: a) design and produce thermal interconnects and thermal interface materials, layered materials, components and products that meet customer specifications while minimizing the size of the device and number of layers; b) produce more efficient and better designed materials, products and/or components with respect to the compatibility requirements of the material, component or finished product; c) develop reliable methods of producing desired thermal interconnect materials, thermal interface materials and layered materials and components/products comprising contemplated thermal interface and layered materials; and d) effectively reduce the number of production steps necessary for a package assembly, which in turn results in a lower cost of ownership over other conventional layered materials and processes.